


Kill Karen Page- Part 7 - Mixed Signals

by KastleInTheSky



Series: Kill Karen Page [7]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7836448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KastleInTheSky/pseuds/KastleInTheSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen and Frank weigh their options after Bullseye's attack; Fisk is forced to regroup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kill Karen Page- Part 7 - Mixed Signals

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for the read you guys! Part 8 coming soon!  
> -KITS

Karen sat, knees at her chest, on the lone chair left at the little table. It was 1:44 in the morning; Frank had been gone now for over an hour. She wasn't sure where he'd run off to or when he'd be back, but she wanted to wait up for him to have even the slightest semblance of a "talk" about what had just happened between them in the apartment, and before that, she supposed, as well. One thing she could deny no longer was that for whatever reason, whatever karmic joke inspired her, she was actively enthralled with Frank Castle, and had been the whole time. From the moment she stepped into his hospital room and dropped Matt's hand, something gleaming from under the dark, vengeful eyes of Frank Castle latched tightly onto every thought she had. At first, she figured she must want to save him, vindicate him from the death and destruction he'd caused, award him justice for the murder of his family. The more she thought about it, though, that wasn't it, at least not anymore. 

Karen stood up, stretched her legs. She paced throughout the kitchen, stringing together the words, deciding what she would say to Frank when he returned. How long have you...? No. What's going to happen between...? No, not that either. Karen ran her fingers roughly through her hair. Her scalp was sweaty, oily, and dusty. Perhaps another shower would help her think things through a little more, she thought. She examined again her shoulder, wrapped in her shirt. She untied it, perfect save for one blood-stained hole in the shoulder. Karen dropped it on the floor and approached the bathroom, delicately peeling off her clothes, wincing from the sore pain from the gunshot. 

Karen turned the water on and looked around the bathroom for shower supplies. She found a dry spare towel perched atop the medicine cabinet, and only a bottle of Pert in the shower, a smaller bottle Frank had more than likely picked up at a bodega or something, and a bar of Irish Spring. She huffed. It wasn’t ideal by a long shot, but she hadn’t much of a choice. She jumped in the shower, leaving the door cracked to allow the steam to dissipate more easily. The warm water stung her shoulder; it wasn’t smart to leave it uncovered like that, she knew. Still, she familiarized herself with the pain. She let herself be saturated, standing there, the water pouring. She didn’t want to save Frank, not anymore, she resumed. Frank didn’t need her to save him. She wanted to watch as he saved himself, those around him, purging the venom and the poison that made his life a travesty of what it once was. She had often said that she didn’t agree with what Frank did, and to an extent, that was always true. However, there was always a part of her that envied the initiative of Frank Castle, and that was what always scared her about him. Karen could, effectively, understand him. She'd lost someone dear to her too, her younger brother, when she was eighteen and her brother "mysteriously veered off the road" in the middle of the day as the papers put it. Karen knew that was bullshit, and could never prove it, not even to her parents. She would've done anything to find out what really happened to Kevin that day. She empathized with Frank, and she was almost jealous that he, after all he'd done, had answers. Maybe, somehow, he could help her find the answers too.

She stood thinking under the showerhead like that for probably a long time. As she finally scrubbed her head with the generic shampoo, she heard the front door open and Frank trudging around the kitchen. She stopped washing, immediately letting the soap rinse from her head; she needed to get things off her chest now, she thought. Yet, the longer she waited, the more another curious idea intrigued her. Karen slid open the shower curtain without turning off the water. She rung her hair out with her hands and tip-toed over to the bathroom door, ducking quickly behind it so that Frank wouldn't see her. Karen peeked at him through the crack; he was standing in the middle of the room holding the shirt Karen had taken off her shoulder wound. He held it as flat as he could in his hands, tracing his fingers over the rim of the bullet hole. Frank was scowling down at it, and he crumbled it in his hands and held it about two inches away from his face for a few seconds before wincing and throwing it down onto the floor again.

Frank took off his leather jacket and chucked it towards the table. Karen took notice of what he was wearing underneath. She assumed it was a sort of bulletproof vest. He wore it over a tight black t-shirt that could barely contain his arms. It was painted with a skull – if Karen remembered correctly, his own skull, the skull chipped by a bullet shown in an x-ray they had presented at Frank’s trail. Frank took that off as well, tossing it on the floor. His undershirt looked practically painted on from sweat, and he tore that off, leaving only his glistening warm torso out. Karen felt flushed; yes, Frank was devilishly handsome as well, that one was easy for her to admit. He threw that shirt into the corner, moving next over to his closet, where he crouched down to dig around the bottom. This area of the room was out of sight to Karen, and though she couldn’t see him, she could hear him crumpling with what sounded like newspaper, flipping the page once and then stopping, presumably reading. He stayed like this for a few minutes.

Karen had watched enough. She snuck back over into the shower and resumed her washing, running the bar of soap along her bare skin. She turned the water off when she was finished, and from back out in the room, she heard Frank scramble to put the paper away and move back over towards his guns and radio. She grabbed her towel, quickly patting herself dry, and swung the door open. Just as she suspected, Frank was there tinkering with his guns again, still shirtless and he hadn’t looked up to acknowledge her. He still hadn’t cleaned his face, though at this point all his wounds had stopped bleeding, leaving only crust behind, and he was sweating intensely. Karen kept her eyes on him and she walked over to her shirt on the ground, picked it up, and walked back towards Frank. She knelt down beside him, his body visibly tensing from her proximity. 

“Come here,” she called to him softly. Frank didn’t move, but shot a peripheral glare at her. Karen reached over to him, cupping his chin in her one hand, readying her shirt in the other. She held his face steady as she wiped away the blood with the sweat. Frank hissed and flinched as she did from the stinging salt, yet she continued until his face was no longer damp or bloody.  
“I’m sorry,” she said, removing the shirt.  
“For?” Frank grunted. He still did not turn towards her.  
“I don’t know… all of this, I guess,” Karen answered, tucking her wet hair behind her ears again. She waited for Frank to reply; there were a few ways this could go, she thought. Frank could apologize back, they could hash out this palpable connection between the two of them and move on from there, he could deny anything had happened, and they could move on from there, or he could say nothing. Karen should’ve known he’d choose the latter. Frank continued cleaning the guns, not a peep in response.

Karen sighed, buttressed herself with her hand, and pushed herself up. She headed back towards the closet where they’d thrown her hastily-made travel bag, searching for new clothes. From the other side of the room, she heard Frank throw down his guns carelessly.  
“Look…” he started. “You’ve… you’ve got enough on your plate right now.”  
She squinted at him. “What do you mean?” she asked.  
“I mean… don’t… don’t worry about me, alrght?”  
Karen sucked her teeth and nodded. She didn’t know what that meant, but okay, it as a start.  
“Where, um… where did you go, before?”  
“Went to find Murdock,” he said. He stayed seated in his corner. “He got 'em all out okay. Said the cops finally collared that bastard, went pretty quietly after puttin’ up a big fight.”  
“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Karen added.  
“No, it doesn’t,” Frank affirmed. “More than likely he’s going back to Fisk to regroup. So, I was thinkin’…”

He paused, crossing his legs underneath him, and pushed himself up, finally turning toward Karen. He took a moment to register that she was still only in her towel, and Karen could see him blush a little as he took the sight in, then avoided eye contact.  
“There somewhere else you can go?” he asked.  
“You mean, you want me to stay somewhere else? I guess I could... stay with Matt or Foggy, or…”  
“I mean outta the city. Somewhere remote, somewhere these dipshits won’t know to look.”  
Karen swallowed hard. "Uh... um, yeah. Yeah, I... I have somewhere."  
"Good," Frank grunted. "Can you be ready soon?"  
Karen gestured towards her bag in the closet. "Ready as I'll ever be," she said sarcastically.

Frank took a step towards Karen, his jaw tense and his eyes flaring again. He opened his mouth to say something, but Karen interrupted, her hands in front of her as if to keep Frank back.  
"Listen," she started. "I... Look, I know... that what happened earlier was... unexpected, but... I don't want... I don't want things to be tense, between us." This was an understatement. Karen was fairly certain that whatever she had assumed was happening between the two of them was way off base by the way Frank had acted towards her afterwards. Men didn't usually storm out of the room when she kissed them, not even she was humble enough to deny that. At this point, she would do or say whatever it took for him to not run away again. Frank nodded hesitantly to her request, still not making eye contact. Karen turned back around bending back into her bag for clean clothes. From behind her, she could hear Frank shuffling in place.  
"I'm sorry," he grumbled. Karen froze in her spot crouched on the floor, her hand mid-air outstretched. She squinted her eyes again, rolling them over to her peripheral.  
"For what?" she asked. He didn't answer. Karen could still just hear him shuffling in place, breathing, until he finally paced himself towards the bathroom and shut the door behind him, starting the shower up for himself. Karen continued rummaging through her things. 

It was clear Frank was a simply man, she could see as she examined the clothes he'd thrown in her bag. It was all just jeans, different-colored t-shirts and tank tops, save one other pair of stretchy pants, a couple of knit sweaters, and underwear. That was okay though; simple was encouraged where they were going. She grabbed a pair of jeans, a blue t-shirt, and a grey sweater in one hand and went to pull her bag out of the closet with the other. As she did, she heard paper rustle from beside the bag. That's right, she thought. Frank had been reading something before she formally got out of the shower. Karen set the bag down out of the closet and picked up the pieces of fallen newspaper. They were seemingly old, a little dusty and browning slightly. There was no front cover, so she couldn't tell from what day or month these pages had come from; from the names of the writers, though, she could tell it was the Bulletin. She turned one page over, however, and then it was familiar. The thick black letters screamed up at her in her own voice. "What does it mean, to be a hero? Look in the mirror, and you'll know..." This article ran late last year. Frank had kept this all that time? Karen set the paper down, more confused than ever, as she heard the water cut out from inside the bathroom. She was still standing at the closet when Frank emerged from the bathroom. She clutched the clothes she'd set aside tightly to her chest, and she made a bee line straight into the bathroom, Frank's body turning with hers and she pushed passed him. Karen closed and locked the door, immediately resting her hands along the edges of the sink, and she stared up at her reflection in the mirror. Her article. Her article from last year. In Frank's closet. Was she wrong? Did Frank harbor any feelings for her? Why else would he keep that article, the article he could probably tell was inspired by his story, for all this time? Why was he being cold to her now then? It all made Karen's head spin, and as she pulled on her underwear and her jeans, she fretted thinking about what this next journey would bring to light. From outside, Frank was calling to her.  
"So, where're we goin'?"  
Karen pulled on her bra and her t-shirt, holding the sweater in her hand and she took a long final look in the mirror at her paling face, still slightly bruised from a few nights ago. Breathe in, breathe out. She replied -  
"Home."  
* * *  
"I swear to god, when I see this mother fucker again... YOU'RE A LYIN' PIECE OF SHIT, YKNOW THAT? HUH, FISK? YOU NO GOOD, ROTTEN..."  
Bullseye was being hauled down the prison halls, trying so desperately to break free of the guards' hold on him that he was lifting himself off the ground and had to be put in a straight jacket. Fisk could hear his incessant cries blaring through the halls as the guards brought him closer and closer to the courtyard. Fisk had been enjoying a relaxing glass of Pinot Grigio before bed when the news of the incident at the hospital and the subsequent "arrest" of Mr. Lester, and it was a shame because he was rather tired this evening. He waited on his bench, his wine besides him. The guards opened up the door to the courtyard and threw a disheveled, bleeding, swearing Bullseye hard onto the concrete. He landed on his knees, glaring up at Fisk.  
“Mr. Lester!” Fisked called jovially. He stood up, heartily laughing at Bullseye with his glass in hand. Bullseye grunted several times like a wild boar ready to charge, spitting blood sharply onto the ground.  
“Don’t you laugh at me you fucking bastard!” he screamed. “You didn’t say she was walkin’ around with those two fucking losers! This deal is bullshit!”

Fisk still chuckled as he sauntered over to Bullseye until he was directly in front of him. He took a knee so that his eyes met the bruised, bloodshot eyes of Bullseye.  
“Oh, Mr. Lester…”, Fisk chortled. Fisk gave Bullseye one last toothy smile, before he whipped back his right arm and belted Bullseye in the side of his face. Bullseye fell over onto his side, crying in pain, blood and one tooth spilling from his mouth.  
“Your… insubordination… as well as your lack of success were not a part of this deal, either.” Fisk stood up again one leg at a time. “Now, please enlighten me. Who are these two ‘losers’ you speak of?”  
Bullseye stayed lying in the small pool of his blood.  
“That big pussy boy Frank Castle,” he slurped. “and that, that red idiot. That Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”  
Fisk was intrigued.  
“Aha…” he hummed. “So they are… protecting Miss Page, is what you mean to say, correct?”  
“They’re protecting Miss Page is what I mean to say, yes,” Bullseye mocked.  
“And why didn’t you dispose of them as well, Mr. Lester?”  
Bullseye cackled, blood splashing under his flapping lips. “That ain’t how this is gonna work, that’s why. You paid for one hit. I’m not doin’ your extra dirty work for you and gettin’ them outta your hair for free! You want them dead too, then you gotta pay the piper.”  
“What’s the cost for that?” Fisk hissed down at him.  
Bullseye rolled over onto his back, looking at Fisk, smirking.  
“How much ya’ got?”

Fisk folded his arms across his chest. “You get your freedom for Karen Page,” he started sternly, “and we can arrange monetary compensation for Daredevil and Frank Castle.”  
“I was hoping that question would be answered with a number, actually,” Bullseye said.  
Fisk charged at Bullseye, taking a strong hand to Bullseye’s throat.  
“You are lucky that you are not DEAD on this floor, do you hear me?” Fisk yelled as Bullseye gasped for air, kicking his legs on the concrete. Fisk laughed again. “Do you people, you disgusting, wretched petty thieves have no sense of, of honor? Loyalty? I tell you the story of how my one, true friend in this world is murdered in cold blood, and you people make a mockery out of this? You come back to me crying, ‘The Devil chased me away’, ‘The Punisher chased me away’? There is one thing that was never made painstakingly clear to you, Mr. Lester, and that is, I am the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. I, am the Punisher. The one person you will do well to fear above all others in this city, Mr. Lester, is me. If you come back here again, without their heads on steaks for me, Mr. Lester, I will walk outside of this prison and I will kill the four of you with my bare hands, is that understood?” Fisk rose, laying three hard kicks into Bullseye’s side. He writhed and moaned on the floor, as Fisk took another long swig of his Pinot.  
“Now,” Fisk cooed down to Bullseye. “Why don’t you take yourself back to your old cell and get some rest. You look rather… distraught. I’m going to need you in fighting shape for this business.”  
* * *  
Karen found herself on the front porch of her childhood home, a two story, sage green farmhouse on a ten-acre plot. The April sun was pouring down mercifully, and a sweet breeze blew through the screens and through Karen’s hair. She ran her fingers along the sinews of the white whicker rocking chair she sat in, a mason jar full of her mother’s homemade raspberry lemonade on a table besides her. She stood up, looking outside at the blowing blades of thick grass, flickering green and gold as they danced. She walked towards the screen door and pushed it open, hearing it shut with a quick smack as she stepped outside. The smell of soil and pine hit her like waterfall, entering her nose and mouth and spilling into every capillary. She stepped out, just enough to see the big red barn some yards away. She could see Frank there, crouched down outside tending to the garden. He wore jeans and an old flannel shirt, and the sun speckled off the thick tuffs of curly black hair atop his head. He turned to her as if on cue, raising half his mouth in a grin and waiving her towards him. Karen smiled back at him. She took a step out towards him, now standing, calling her with both hands. Her bare foot hit the grass, and a bony white hand reached out and grabbed her tightly, digging its long yellowing fingernails deep into a spot on her shoulder. Karen gasped loudly. From behind her, a familiar voice whispered to her,  
“We’re going to find you.”  
* * *  
Karen jolted awake, panting furiously as highway lights rolled passed her in the otherwise pitch-black night.  
“Hey, hey, easy,” Frank called from the driver’s side. More softly, he asked, “Another one?”  
Karen straightened her back into her seat. She didn’t want Frank to keep seeing her like this, tormented and afraid, and just as before, she felt embarrassed.  
“Yeah…”, she affirmed. She looked out the window; there didn’t seem to be any exit signs coming for a few miles. Karen looked over at the clock. It was just before five in the morning, and they’d been driving for about two and half hours.  
“Where are we?” she asked groggily.  
“’Bout twenty miles north of Springfield,” Frank answered. He leaned over to the radio and flicked it on. “Here, maybe this’ll help calm ya’ down.” It did. Karen focused on the music for a while, lining up her breaths to match the metronome beat of each song. Soon, she was relaxed again, all but forgetting the bump of terror her dream had given her. Still, she tried fervently to keep in mind the image of Frank kneeling over the garden.

Karen began to flip through the stations. Clips of all kinds of music rotated through the car. Suddenly, albeit finally, Karen came across a song she recognized.  
Baby, baby, I’m aware of where you go, each time you leave my do-or. I watch you walk down the street, know-ing your other love you’ll meet…  
Karen let out a massive, full-belly laugh, keeling over slightly as she did. Frank looked over at her flutteringly, trying not to break his concentration on the road.  
“What’s so funny?” he asked, a slight laugh in his own voice. Karen continued cackling and wiped a slight tear from her eye. She caught her breath.  
“When I… when I was a kid,” she laughed, “I was in a dance class. I was maybe… maybe six or seven years old.’ She laughed heartily again. “I had a friend in the class named Sarah. Sweet little thing, but terribly, TERRIBLY shy. We had our first recital, and we had to dance,” she giggled, “to this song, and Sarah was PETRIFIED. I mean, I had to pull her onto the stage with both hands after the music started. She just stood there, and I was next to her. I wasn’t dancing myself, I was just trying to get her to calm down and start dancing. And then…” Karen laughed loudly again. “Then, I guess she just got so scared, that she peed her pants right there on stage, and I just FROZE. We were both just standing there completely still, our parents were yelling at us from the audience. Our dance teacher finally had to pull us off stage.” Karen continued laughing, slowly toning it down as the moment passed, wiping another happy tear from her eye.  
“So…” Frank chimed. “You’re laughing because you made a little girl so scared she pissed herself?” 

Karen felt slightly ashamed as she tucked a loose strand of hair into her messy bun. Maybe it wasn’t as funny as she thought. Soon, though, Frank shook his head and laughed too.  
“You’re somethin’ else,” he rasped. Karen chuckled with him, until soon they both droned off leaving themselves alone with the hum of the tires on the road again. Karen looked out the window and spent the time seeing if you could decipher the different types of trees they passed, a skill she carried with her after tagging along with Kevin to his Eagle Scout meetings when they were kids.

“You got family?” Frank asked suddenly. Karen whipped around to look at him.  
“Up there, still? That where we’re goin?’” he continued. Karen thought about how Frank hadn’t actually asked any questions about their destination. She gave him some vague directions, and he took it from there.  
“Uh, yeah,” Karen answered. “Yeah, my uh, my parents still live in the same house as we have my whole life.”  
“Just you three?” Frank pressed.  
Karen contemplated her answer. “Well, four,” she started. “My parents, they’re a little older. My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about six or seven years ago. It was a lot for my mom to handle alone, since I was away at school. So they live there with an in-home nurse.”  
“Brothers? Sisters?”  
Karen thought about this answer too. It was too difficult to go into detail about now, but she was honest.  
“I had a brother,” she admitted.  
Frank pried no further. Instead, he shifted himself in his seat straightening his posture. He cleared his throat, his voice noticeably lower.  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
There wasn’t much Karen could say after that, except a breathy “Thank you”. The conversation ended there, and Karen again focused out the window. From her side of the car, she could see the thin brim of light blue sky that peeked out behind the trees. They would be there in a couple hours hopefully. Karen pulled her feet up into her seat, crossing them under one another and she hugged her knees tightly. She hadn’t been home since she first moved to New York. She scratched nervously at her legs and closed her eyes again, reluctant of what awaited her.


End file.
